#queer gatekeeping

[chaosisorderao3]

So many leftists are exactly like conservative bigots but will never admit it. They both want to bully people but use their "values" to get a free pass to do so.

In the case of "leftists", see:

- horrendous unmitigated antisemitism

- gatekeeping in the queer community about who can and can't use various words and labels

- lust for a violent revolution as the proposed solution to capitalism

- concerning levels of shaming directed towards people who make mistakes or haven't had a reasonable chance to learn

Etc etc etc

[justagaymoth]

yeah that doesnt sound like a mesh, sounds like a normal romantic crush.... you can still be aro even if you experience romantic attraction sometimes you know. no need to lie to yourself.

Trust me I know you can be aro and still experience romantic attraction Ive been in love before. To some extent you are right there is a little romantic attraction but it's not completely romantic mostly made up of "platonic" physical touch desires. I put platonic in quotes because I'm not sure what platonic attraction feels like as I have not felt it in years. Anyways the reason I don't categorize this feeling as a romantic crush is because when I feel romantic attraction I have strong desires to kiss the person on the lips and make out with them not just in a sexual way. When I think about this girl I normally don't think about kissing her on the lips and when I do it doesn't last long like it only last one thought or a few minutes and these thoughts don't come very often. Also when I get romantic crushes I want to date them. I don't want to date her in fact I'm kinda grossed out by the idea of dating her. I would hate for her to have a crush on me and when I have crushes I usually want them to like me romantically.

Also like why do you care?? You are the gatekeeper of alterous attraction. I'm not lying to myself because I know what a crush feels like and it's different from this. I know my feelings better than you because I'm the one feeling them.

[thecouncilofidiots]

Hnnnnng

I can't see a post about Chappell Roan without going into fight-or-flight anymore because I was literally called "not queer" (teasingly but it hurt) because I don't listen to her music

Like

I'm 5/6 in queer identities

I'm not cisgender, not allo(romantic/sexual), and not hetero(romantic/sexual); the only non-queer part of me is being perisex (as far as I know)

Not listening to ONE artist doesn't change that

I like and listen to rock/alt music; I don't DISLIKE her or her music, it's just not my vibe

Trying to live as a queer person whose identities are often involved in discourse and seen as invalid, even by other queers, is hard enough without things like this...

[dinosaur-ears]

When I first started to think of myself as bi, I really felt like I didn't "need" Pride and didn't really belong to the LGBTQ+ community because I've been in mostly hetero-passing relationships. I was afraid that I was somehow taking something from people who were "more queer" by claiming my place among them.

But since coming out, I've come to recognize not only the real pain and heartache that staying closeted was causing me, but also that I grew up surrounded by explicit biphobia. Like, multiple people told me, even before I had a sexual identity, some variation of:

"I guess I get being gay, but I can't wrap my head around bisexuals. It seems like they'll just take whatever they can get."

Before I even experienced sexual attraction, I'd internalized that bi people are greedy, oversexed, unselective, and attention-seeking. So now, three years into being out and deeply in love with my straight spouse, I am pissed and loud about bi+ issues.

Bi people in hetero-passing relationships belong in the community.

Gay people who grew up in supportive spaces belong in the community.

Trans people who go stealth belong in the community

Nonbinary people who pass as their AGAB belong in the community

Marginalized people do not need to guard the gate to mutual support.

[the-yearning-astronaut]

If there's one universal thing we all experience being queer, it's a pervasive feeling that we don't fit, whether that's in society at large or our own communities. People who decide you don't belong because you're different are doing queerness wrong.

We see you. We recognise you as one of us. You don't need to fit into a specifically shaped box to be here. If we believed you needed to change to belong we'd be no different than all the people who labelled us queer in the first place.

You've got this.

Hey anon. Just wanted to thank you for this message. I didn't post it before because I wasn't sure what to say (too many emotions lol) and because I wanted to be able to easily reference it again.

And I'm glad I waited because even though I'm still full of emotions and don't really know what to say or how to say it, I needed the reminder today that it's ok to be queer and express and explore my queerness in whatever way I wish and that there are plenty of people out there who would support me through it.

And that the people who gatekeep identities and determine who is allowed write or draw what and how they're allowed to do it... are in the wrong. I wish I could say I'm capable of just ignoring them and moving on, but I'm not. It hurts. It hurts to express myself and explore my understanding of my own identity through the filter of media and characters and have fellow queer fans say I'm wrong and what I'm doing is wrong and that my interpretation of this character is wrong wrong wrong.

And I hope one day these kinds of people come to realize their words and actions have caused harm to members of the community they profess to support. And that they're able to admit they were in the wrong and grow from those mistakes.

Anyway. I sorta did find some words I guess. 💛

[anticapitalistmongoose]

alright boys, girls, neither, both, and those in between we need to clear something up:

if someone says they are queer, they are queer.

no ifs, ands, buts, etc. they are queer.

and if they discover later that they're cishet, great, amazing, wonderful, i'm glad we gave them community when they were figuring themselves out and needed it.

no gatekeeping of queerness here, alright?

because when shit hits the fan queerphobes wont care whether you're a cis gay man who goes by he/him or a bigender aromantic pansexual who goes by it/its

so stop with the respectability politics.

we're a community, fucking act like it.

[luaminesce]

So I accidentally read something that upset me.

I was browsing around Quora looking at strange posts (because some of them are so... odd they're actually kinda funny), when I stumbled upon one user who was wondering if they were gay; and one of the users, another queer person, was like, "hurr you're not gay; you're just straight".

And that upset me.

As someone who went through something similar, who went through a traumatic period of self-hârm because they knew they didn't want to be with men ever, to realise they were in fact a lesbian; this upset me massively. Things like this are a trigger for me.

Yes, it was my own fault for looking at it; but it brought back those painful memories of what I went through.

Protip: if someone is wondering if they might be queer; don't invalidate them by dismissing them. Regardless of sexuality.

[angelspearlheart]

Latest obsession: pocket shrine/altars

[xiaq]

Your first pride story was touching and all but you still married a man.

Yeah, bisexuals do that sometimes.

[dolokhoded]

with greece legalizing gay marriage and everything i'm so tired of people diminishing queerness in greece to "oh your ancient greek ancestors would be proud ! alexander the great would be proud ! achilles would be proud sappho would be proud plato would be proud" etcetc.

queer rights progressing in greece wouldn't make our "ancient greek ancestors" proud because they had an entirely different concept of marriage than us, viewed women as objects to be sold and traded and only accepted homosexuality between men, or even more likely, a man and a literal underage boy.

gay rights in greece aren't benefiting some people who died a few thousand years ago or are Literally Fictional. greek queerness isn't just some ancient dionysian fantasy of feeding each other grapes and reciting poetry to each other by the sea. actual greek people who do benefit from this still exist. it doesn't honor some ancient guy who condoned slavery. it honors greek queer people who were out there protesting at the controversy this law raised with the church and actually made the effort to win this fight.

ancient greece isn't the epitome of queerness, not even close. absolutely in no way when it concerned exclusively just gay men. the epitome of queerness is the trans kid from my hometown who insisted on cutting their hair and dressing masculine even within their transphobic high school environment and strict orthodox family, or the woman who taught me programming who was married with children and realized she was aromantic fifteen years into marriage, or the gay punks who kept cops out of the university's anarchist hotspot.

greek queer people aren't history or mythology, and ancient greece isn't the queer utopia you make it out to be. we're still here, and we're fighting against the exact ideas our ancient culture perpetuated.

[viceandmature]

Girl Power

[hussyknee]

One thing you have to remember is that online queer discourse doesn't make a damn bit of difference to systemic queerphobia irl or LGBT rights. No amount of playing respectability politics by identifying the "real freaks" will ever lead to sexual emancipation or prevent sexual violence. No amount of trying to identify and cast out "oppressors" and "infiltrators" will ever make homophobes and transphobes respect the sanctity of your sexual identity. Not letting people have words and flags and colours is absolutely nothing except a weapon for online harrassment and clout-chasing wielded by white and Western weirdos who've drunk the colonizer Kool-Aid.

[dinosaur-ears]

I've been thinking about how all categories of sexuality and gender are not only socially constructed but also a complex mix of descriptive and prescriptive.

So, like, descriptive definitions are: I see a bunch of different things and they seem to cluster into a few groups; I'll name and describe the groups.

Whereas prescriptive definitions are: based on some theory or how I think the world should work, things should fall into these categories. I will now seek out Things and assign them to the Categories.

Prescriptive definitions are mostly thought of in linguistics, where certain people like to say that you can't use a word the way you want because it is Wrong. But they're really useful in human-built systems--like, if I'm making a committee and one of the positions on it is Head of Clowns, it's very important for me to define what I mean by that, only choose people suited to it, and enforce certain rules to keep the Head of Clowns in alignment with the definition of the role. (Or else the clowns might run amok!)

And descriptive definitions are often favored in linguistics, as a way of understanding the way language really IS used, rather than focusing on a set of rules that may not reflect reality. I might come up with a descriptive definition of Head of Clowns based on observing a hierarchy within the clown community, but it wouldn't be a role I invented or policed.

So I think part of the issue with gender definitions

...is that generally, genders started out as descriptive groupings in a given cultural context and then we layered prescriptive definitions on top of them, so that "women are often caring" becomes "women are caring" and finally "you're not a REAL woman if you're not caring". Ditto for petite, long-haired, smooth-skinned, kind, quiet, deferential, whatever. Rinse and repeat for men.

BUT THEN we go back to assuming the definitions are descriptive, so we end up with biological essentialism, where people think that historically all men and women have looked and acted certain ways and that it must be innate.

And I think some enbies are experiencing that same process now, with people eager to tell us how to be enbies instead of just letting the language follow people's behavior and presentation.

And likewise for sexuality,

I don't think bi and pan people would worry about not being "queer enough" if there wasn't this element of policing going on, and if we didn't kind of believe that our sexuality definitions represented a Real and Complete understanding of human sexuality.

. . . Anyway, this has been helping me feel better about my ongoing crises of gender and sexuality and gatekeeping myself out of the queer community.

[if-you-see-me-run-away]

[placeboelysium]

Klaasje outfits !!

[ewthatsgross69]

the guy I'm dating says "you should have sex with me because I love you" but the sun makes me happier anytime I am near and my mother wants to know everything about me and I wash my skin and brush my hair and my dad teaches me math and my dog jumps on me and my grandma eats lunch with me and my friends hide their drugs from me because they really love me